redtopz

I started a racing blog here in 2013 to record my adventures and experiences with my 1999 C5 corvette. And to share knowledge with things that worked well and things that didn't. I also wanted to expose good products and services I've found from sponsors and other vendors. Hopefully it's been successful. I haven't gone back and read the previous years' reports, but I'm sure I will one day. Judging by the number of views my reports are still getting I will assume that there are still some people out there who are interested in following along . Thanks and feel free to post up here with questions or thoughts!

Last year was all about NASA ST2. We formed a Western ST2 group which was a ton of fun and I had a very successful year with many wins, track records, and ultimately a national championship. While the group was welcomed in the Socal Region, it was not welcomed in the Norcal Region and I was told to basically not run a multi-region "series" within NASA. So this year I'm racing with SCCA .

If you were following in 2014, you might remember I raced T1 and GT2 at the SCCA Majors and went to the Runoffs at Laguna Seca. This year I plan to focus only on GT2 because it has had larger fields of racers and the cars seem to be more evenly matched. T1 has some seriously unequal classing right now for some cars.

The Runoffs will be held at Mid Ohio this year and I'm planning on making the trip out there if I qualify. My car in GT2 is very similar to the old World Challenge C5 corvette. Right now I'm running an LS2 engine built by Synergy last year with stock intake and TB and a 75 mm restrictor. I am running my car at just under 3100 lbs with driver. With the recent addition of the Essex AP Radical brakes, my car is very fast in this configuration. It may not have the pure power of some of the other GT2 cars, but as a whole it is competitive. And I think Mid Ohio is more of a handling track which should suit my car. Some of the other GT2 competition will include porsche 997 cup cars, vipers, C6Z corvettes, Trans Am 2 cars, etc. It's a fast race group and seems to attract some of the top racers from around the country including some Trans Am racers and Pirelli World Challenge drivers.



Here's a link to the GT2 Runoffs race last year at Daytona.

http://www.scca.com/videos/1972622

redtopz

Converting my car to GT2 specs was pretty easy this time since I had done it 2 years ago. Basically it consisted of installing a shorter 2" splitter, lowering my wing below the roof, installing a stock dash, and windshield wiper. The rest was just decals. Even though I was racing NASA last year, Rick built my LS2 to SCCA T1/GT2 specs knowing we would eventually cross back over. The power plant is a built LS2 with a cam limited to 0.60" valve lift. The intake and throttle body are stock per the rules and it has a 75 mm restrictor plate.

To qualify for Runoffs, you must go to at least 3 US Majors weekends and complete at least one race per event. The first western Majors race was at Cal Speedway in Fontana where they race Indy cars and Nascar. It's a very fast track with a banked oval section followed by a large infield. This track rewards horsepower, strong brakes, and horsepower . Of course, driving always counts for something too.

Friday was a warmup and qualifying session. I hadn't been to this track in 2 years, but it's a simple track to remember. Friday qual session I managed to put my car in pole position with a 1:41.3 lap. I was pretty happy with that lap time. I only had one set of tires for the weekend, so Sat morning I decided to just go out and do a few warmup laps in the 2nd qualifying session. But I was kind of surprised to see that 3 other cars just beat my qual lap time by over a second running 1:40.1 laps . This actually made me happy and glad to be racing GT2 with some fierce competition!

So in Saturday's race, I started P4 behind a Blackdog world challenge C6 corvette, a 997 cup car, and a viper. I was followed by 2 other corvettes and a stock car, putting me right in the middle. After a decent start followed by several laps shaking off the winter cobwebs, I started to get in a groove and turn a bunch of 1:41 laps in the race. With some luck and mistakes by other drivers, I ended up coming in 2nd place. Here's the video:



Saturday night forecast was calling for over 1" of rain on Sunday and snow on the grapevine (the freeway heading back to my house). Although I brought rain tires and installed a defroster/blower and was looking forward to a wet race, I did not want to get stuck in the snow on the grapevine for 24 hours as has happened in the past. So unfortunately, I decided to leave that night for the 7 hour tow back home. The guys that stuck it out had a great time of course .

So the first Majors event is in the books and I completed my required 1 race. The next Majors race is this weekend at Big Willow Springs and it's the first time they've held a Majors event at that track. At least after this weekend I'll be done with my 2 least favorite tracks. The 3rd Major will be awesome at Thunderhill running the 3 mile one day and the 5 mile the next .

JRL

Good luck at Willow Springs and all year! It's gonna be another awesome year for you. Runoffs at Mid-Ohio should be incredible.

Robert R1

Kick some *** Bill! My favorite thread on corvette forum continues

folsomlarry

Good luck this season Bill I agree that this is always an interesting thread to read and look forward to the updates.

RichieRichZ06

This year sounds like it will be exciting and I can't wait to hear how you do. Keeping up with some of the high dollar World Challenge build and GT3 cup cars is impressive.

Keep the updates coming.

DarkMastyr

redtopz

Wow, thanks guys! I hope it's another great year. The car and I both survived the weekend and made podium both days . The good news is the car is mechanically sound. The engine ran great, the brakes worked great, and nothing broke . The bad news is I kind of suck at that track and the changes I made to my gearing hurt me at Big Willow. In ST2 last year I was actually a bit faster with the LS6 even with 30-40 less hp because I revved it up to 7200 rpm and didn't shift to 5th. I have the rev limiter set lower in my LS2 and I'm trying not to sustain high rpm's for long periods. So even with the extra power this year, I had to shift to 5th twice per lap and it basically offset the time gained. I was only 3-4 mph faster down the main straight in GT2 than ST2 (the main difference being a 75 mm restrictor vs a 60 mm, slightly more aggressive tuning, and 80 lbs lighter). The time I picked up this year was mostly from better tires and braking. Here's my best lap of the weekend, and I'm sure I could do this time in ST2 also. It's only 0.8 seconds faster than my St2 race lap record there on scrub tires. I never once all weekend did Turn 9 as well as last year. That is the scariest and most difficult turn to get right for me.





Three Majors Races and 3 podiums. No wins yet. We'll have to do something about that at Thunderhill or Buttonwillow!
Thanks Abel Chevrolet for all the work on my car and parts they send whenever I need it. Rich and Derek are great to work with. Also, I'm still loving this Chevy truck. 75,000 miles already and not one issue, tows my 32' trailer with ease. Also thanks to Synergy for this engine. I almost let Rick down again at Cal Speedway when my dry sump pulley started walking out again. That's what blew my LS6. But I saw it and now have a locking collar on there which will never let that happen again. The collar set screw is wedged tightly into the keyway on the shaft. It's not moving.

redtopz

Saturday I ran on my tires from Cal Speedway. I had a solid low 1:23 lap going in qualifying but couldn't get my shifter from 5th to 4th and it eventually went into 6th as I approached T9. This cost me 1 second according to my data, but still put me in P2 for the race with a low 1:24. Then I decided to raise my front end for more clearance and to make sure my splitter was higher than the minimum 3" in the rules. It was right at 3" before, but I turned it up a bit before the race to be safe and keep it from scraping in the bumps. Big mistake! I didn't check the alignment afterward and also accidentally raised it more than I wanted so I eliminated my rake. The car handled like crap in the race and I had to lift in a lot of turns to keep the car on the track. Still a fun race, but is should have been better. One thing that stood out was all the tranny shifting problems I was having. I'm not sure if this is just a lemon tranny but I've had nothing but issues with it since I bought it. Abel fixed the broken 3rd gear and synchro that failed right after I bought it (I didn't buy it from Abel). But I'm still having trouble getting into other gears. I adjusted the shifter alignment on Sunday morning and that seemed to help. I just never have any of these issues with my old RPM tranny so it's kind of puzzling. It's like the shift locations are slightly different than my other tranny and it's throwing me off, maybe it's just me. Here's Saturday's race. I made a pass for the lead at around 12:30, but was later passed in a waving yellow by another car and ended up in 2nd place.

redtopz

The Essex Radi-Cal AP brakes now have 5 race weekends on them. Chuck and Lee both have them on their cars now too . I went with the standard width calipers and here's how my Hawk 70 pads look after 5 race weekends. The right side pad looks a little thicker than it is because part of it is outside of the rotor. Every weekend I think this will be the last of the pads but they keep on going. And the 14" rotors are barely heat checked. These things are awesome. They just handle the heat so much better than most brakes. I have just a standard cooling duct going to a LG spindle duct like most people have on their track cars. The other nice thing is with the ZR1 knuckles, SKF hubs, and ant-knockback piston springs, my pedal is always in the same place. With my old setup, my pedal position would change and in odd angle brake zones such as going down a hill and turning side to side, such as coming down into T5 at Big Willow, one or more wheel would tend to lockup or activate abs due to varying braking forces. With the AP brakes, the forces are uniformly applied no matter what so I don't have any abs issues or lockup if abs is turned off.

Robert R1

That Porsche story complaining about the slicks vs DOT is amazing. I would have started laughing as he's saying it.

Are you not able to file a protest and submit your video as evidence? not only did he make the pass but it was pretty damn unsafe having to avoid the safety vehicle in the process.

redtopz

Yes I asked the chief steward if they received any calls from flaggers or safety workers about that pass and he said "no but you can file a protest". I went through that at Runoffs after getting punted at the start in the T1 race. All they did was take some points away from the other driver and it was a huge waste of time. So I said forget it.

Here is Sunday's race where I started from P3. I had my Monoprice camera facing rearward and overlaid it. You can see what I'm up against with the porsche cup car as it pulls me in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gears at the start and moves from P4 to P3 just like that. And it's lighter, has a sequential tranny, and slicks. God I'd love to drive one of those one day. If I'm going to run in GT2, I'll have to find a way to match the cup car on the straights or I'm wasting my time as far as Runoffs are concerned. However, as far as regional racing, this is a good challenge. Chasing faster cars and drivers and being pushed from behind. GT2 is forcing me to find ways to make myself and the car faster and we are all pushing each other into personal best lap times and tight racing from start to finish.

Shifter was better in this race after re-aligning it. Car was handling better and tires lasted the whole race. I was able to stay with the porsche the whole race, but couldn't pass it, ending in 3rd. The Blackdog world challenge corvette had another comfortable win.



Edit: Crap, I'm sure the overlaid video was synched with the main video when I made it! Now on youtube they are off by several seconds... Must have happened when the video file was created.

Robert R1

That Porsche was darting a car length at least every time you had to shift. Shows how dated a manual shifter can be vs a sequential gearbox. You couldn't even tell when the Porsche was shifting in relation to you.

I noticed in turn 5 you run wide on exit and shallow entry into 6 where as all the videos I've seen people tend to sacrifice the exit of 5 for a straighter line into 6. Just a preference thing?

The winning car was just gone. You sure you guys are in the same class!?

redtopz

Yes, shifting time hurts a little, but it was also pulling while I was WOT in each gear. Those cars are faster than I thought. One funny thing was the p-car driver asked if we could run different gear ratios in the corvettes and I said yes. Then he said, man we have to run our stock gears. Ah, poor guy...

Good eye on my T5 approach. My seat time at that track is limited and so my data is also limited. But last year I thought I could push it in T5 and still get to full throttle over the hump and all the way through T8. This year I had a harder time doing that so I was probably pushing T5 more than optimal on many laps.

redtopz

I'm putting my all aluminum 3 axle race trailer up for sale. The axles are rated 6000 lbs each with E load tires in very good condition. Comes with built in cabinets, 2 tool boxes, tire rack, double side doors with step, heavy duty power hitch jack, scissor jacks in front to stabilize while parked, 13,500 btu air conditioner, 120 v lights inside and out, rear door with folding aluminum ramp extension. Has rubber coin floor and double walled for better insulation. I installed a folding couch/bed that can fold up against the wall. I also installed some insulating louvers to separate the front 12' or so of the trailer from the back so the AC can keep a smaller area cool. Extras include a 5.5 kVA generator which can run the AC and power outlets, a microwave oven, and an ARB 12V/120V refrigerator which was $800 new. Located in Chowchilla, CA and asking price is $20k.

RichieRichZ06

I wish we had money (and a bigger truck) for your trailer. I am sure it won't last long.

redtopz

Yeah, I was thinking this would be a good setup for you guys. Get a truck and we can make a deal . Trailer weighs only 7500 lbs with all my tools in it but no car or spares. Probably looking at 11,000 lbs loaded for the weekend. If I don't get any bites on the forums or facebook, I'll post it up on RacingJunk next week. There are a lot of drag racers and sprint car racers who might want this. I bought it from a sprint car team out of Madera three years ago.

BTW, I'd take $18k for it from corvette forum members.

redtopz

Trailer bump. Price $17,000.

redtopz

OK back to race reports! Start with a Supermiata weekend at Chuckwalla. Another long 10 hour tow and a hot weekend in the low 90's. Hadn't driven the miata since middle of last year and I was hoping to get it out for a test day before this but was too busy. So I basically just changed the oil and loaded it in the trailer.

First day first session, felt pretty good. Ran a 2:05.7 which was 1 second faster than my best time from the year before. I was feeling pretty good until I saw everyone else had picked up 2-3 seconds from the year before LOL. Guess I have my work cut out for the weekend to find some speed!

So for the rest of Saturday I managed to over-drive the car and felt heavy footed. By that I mean I had no touch on the brake and throttle. And coming off the vette, I would enter corners too fast expecting more grip and then drop 2 or 4 wheels when I realized the grip wasn't there. So it was a day of learning and improving. I had a podium in the bag until I made an unforced error and slid off the track.

Sunday I put on some new tires and immediately shaved off more than a second. Had a low 2:04 going until I hit some traffic and ended up with a 2:04.8. That's 2 seconds faster than the prior year, so improving. The Saturday tires sat on the car all winter on my car and I think with freezing temps made them harder with less grip. So on Sunday I felt like I had something to work with and battle in the races. Here's a short vid of me trying to get more speed in one session on Sunday:



Then the afternoon races came. The first race I started P5 I think and ended up P2. I was leading for a lap or two but was chased down and passed by Sonny one of the leading hot shoes in Supermiata. I had nothing for him, so I settled for P2 trying not to overdrive the car or make any dumb mistakes. Then the last race came and started 2nd to last due to the inverted grid. This race was short, but intense and fun. Highlight was a 4 wide pass into turn 8 where I came out in front. Another guy has a great video of the pass and I'll see if I can find it, but here's my vid from that race.



By the end of this race, I felt like I was getting my touch back with my hands and feet and more confident behind the wheel. I needed that after racing the vette at 2 high speed tracks and nothing else. Supermiata is my secret weapon to driver/racer improvement and it's a blast. The people are great and the competition is tough. I'm disappointed that I have schedule conflicts with most of the races this year including the only Norcal one at Sonoma.

redtopz

Here's the other vid. Start at 1:10. 4 wide and then a 5th car right behind.